by Adam Selzer
“What about you? You seeing anyone?”
“Not exactly seeing, but I have a long-distance thing with a girl in Arizona.”
Just as I say that, as if by telepathy, Zoey sends me another “good luck” text and a drawing of me dressed as a Disney villain, summoning lighting and thunder from the balcony of my castle.
I would have preferred a picture of her, but she’s really paranoid about that sort of thing. She’s never sent a photo, or done a voice chat, or anything like that.
Which, of course, means that there’s a pretty good chance that she’s not who she says she is. Maybe she’s really a guy. My hunch is that she’s transgender and afraid to tell me, even though I’ve told her again and again that I’ll be okay with anything she is. All things being equal, I think I like girls the best, but you know how you automatically go for chocolate over vanilla most of the time, except sometimes it’s a choice between a smooth, creamy vanilla made with real vanilla beans and some crummy dollar-store chocolate that tastes like chalk, and then you’re like, “well, I guess vanilla this time?” And sometimes there’s strawberry, too, and that just fucks the whole thing up? It’s like that.
All I care about is that Zoey gets me. She loves my fan-fic stories instead of being freaked out by them—even the darker stuff that I worry is going to make her run off screaming. And if I follow in Mom’s footsteps as a funeral-home owner, that won’t scare her off either. From previous crushes and aborted attempts at relationships, I’ve learned that people putting up with your weirdness is important.
And really, really hard to find.
Long-distance invisible girlfriends might be all I ever get.
While I answer Zoey’s message, I look at the pictures that are set up in the space above the bus windows and below the map on the ceiling. They’re shots of what I guess are supposed to be ghosts—odd shadows and blurry, vaguely humanoid forms glowing in alleys, stairwells, and dead-end streets.
“You get these shots on the tours?”
“Most of them. We only get a picture that I’m really impressed with every now and then. Even with most of these, we know what they really are, and we’re pretty up front about it. That shot that looks like a guy in a hooded robe on the staircase is really just a reflection of Rick’s ear.”
I can think of good explanations for most of the pictures without much effort. The rest could just be outright fakes, but that doesn’t seem like Rick and Cyn’s style. And I appreciate that. I’d been thinking I’d have to tell people that pictures of their flash bouncing off of windows are actually “spirits” on this job. If I don’t, the gig is a lot more attractive to me.
I take an empty seat up front as customers start checking in. When the bus is about a third full, Cyn gets in the driver’s seat and tests the microphone.
“So, what do you guys wanna see?” she asks.
“Ghosts?” someone asks, like they aren’t quite sure.
“Ghosts!” says Cyn. “Perfect. Now, who brought someone we can murder?”
People chuckle, but not enthusiastically. They all seem like they’re tired from a long day at Navy Pier and the Hard Rock Cafe, or whatever tourist places they’ve been to.
One girl holds up three fingers, Hunger Games–style, and says, “I volunteer as tribute.”
“You can’t volunteer yourself as a victim,” says Cyn. “That makes it a suicide, not a murder. We’ve gotta control these variables. That’s science. Look it up.” Then she sits down and ties her hair into a low ponytail.
While we wait for the last couple of people with reservations to arrive, Rick comes onboard, takes the mic, and starts warming the crowd up, making friends with everyone.
“Did you all see this in the news?” he asks, holding up one of those free weekly papers. “Someone broke into President James Garfield’s tomb in Cleveland and stole a dozen commemorative spoons. Spoons! Who gets buried with spoons? And who busts into a tomb and steals a bunch of spoons?”
“Maybe they aren’t really spoons,” I suggest.
“What else would they be?”
He puts the mic in front of me, and I take it.
“Maybe some stormy night, an old woman showed up at the White House and offered President Garfield one single rose for shelter,” I say. “And when he sent her away, she turned his staff into flatware, so whoever stole them was just, like, rescuing them. And now the cops will never find the spoons, because they’re human again.”
Ricardo’s face breaks into a grin. “Okay. You, I like,” he says.
Score.
A minute later the last parties show up, and it’s time to get going. Rick introduces Cyn as “ ‘Switchblade’ Cynthia Fargon, my roommate, my oldest friend, and the best damn driver in the city.” Then he says “All right, you guys wanna go see something scary, or what?”
“Yeah!” people shout.
“All right, Cyn. We’re gonna start out at the men’s room of the Greyhound station.”
“Got it.”
“After that, we’re going to your house.”
“It’s your house too, doinkus,” says Cyn. “Screw your courage to the sticking place, team.”
And he navigates us out from behind the DarkSide buses, down Clark Street, and toward the Loop. The guy in the frog suit at Rainforest Cafe waves as we pass.
Chapter Two
As we head toward the first haunted stop of the tour, Ricardo points out some sites of interest along the way. Just south of the Rainforest Cafe is a spot where a brothel owner named Tillie Wolf was stabbed in the face with a sharpened umbrella stick in 1898. The next block has the spot where a gangster named Hoops-a-Daisy Connors was shot through the eye and the groin one unlucky evening in 1929.
Then he points out the fire station that was built over the site of the old prison where they used to hang people, and tells the story of a guy they tried to bring back to life with electricity after they hanged him in 1882, just to see if they could.
“And all of this is to give you fair warning,” he says, “that this is gonna be an inspiring and uplifting tour for everyone tonight. We’re gonna talk about puppies and ponies and horsies and kitties and rainbows and flowers and sunshine and unicorns.”
Everyone laughs, and he laughs too. “Actually, this is a ghost tour, which means we’re talking death, disease, destruction, dismay, decapitation, defenestration, decomposition, decay, and Donald Trump. So, fasten your seat belts, and if you’re in the first three rows, you may get slimed.”
I’ve made up my mind about the job before we even cross the river into the Loop.
If I don’t get this gig, I will never forgive myself.
The first stop turns out to be the site of the Iroquois Theatre, where a fire in 1903 killed about six hundred people. The robber barons who built it cut every corner they could in order to get it open in time for the holidays, and the whole place was a death trap. We cruise slowly past the newer theater that stands on the site now, then around the corner to the alley that runs behind it.
“A lot of people, like our competition, say they didn’t even build fire escapes,” says Rick. “They did build them, but the problem was that they were completely useless. They were only built to hold a few people at a time, so when there was a stampede, most of the people got shoved over the railings and fell down to the alley. This alley. Right here. The next day the Chicago Tribune called it ‘the Alley of Death and Mutilation.’ ”
Stay classy, Chicago Tribune.
A few people squirm, and Rick starts telling ghost stories about the site. “Employees at the new theater on the grounds,” he says, “talk about a ghostly little girl who makes her presence known by flushing a toilet backstage and giggling.”
“You should be careful of that one,” says one passenger. “On Ghost Encounters they say that ghosts who sound like little girls are actually demons trying to trick you.”
Cyn turns around and says, “That’s because the guys on that show are drugged-up misogynist pigs.”
People laugh, and Rick goes into a whole talk about other old theaters in the city with haunted bathrooms. Apparently there are quite a few.
“If I were on Ghost Encounters,” he says, “I’d probably say, ‘Old theaters in Chicago are vortexes for phantom poopers, bro. And they never hear the sound of them washing their hands!”
My phone buzzes in my purse, presumably either with texts from Mom or Zoey, since no one else ever really messages me, but I don’t check. I’m not going to take out my phone and risk looking unprofessional. I want this job.
After getting back on topic and telling stories about ghosts in the Alley of Death and Mutilation, Rick takes us off the bus and lets everyone walk around looking for them. It doesn’t seem very spooky to me; it’s bright, clean, and only smells vaguely of stale urine (which is pretty good for a downtown alley). A tag on the wall says, BOB SAGET SELLS DRUGS HERE.
That’s Cyn’s handiwork, I assume.
Back when she was my sitter, her hobby was using a pencil to tag walls around Forest Park with fake gang names, like the Butt Onions. She let me act as lookout a couple of times. She’d tag a wall, then walk away casually while I ran off down the road, laughing and shrieking. I was the kind of kid who never had the nerve to do anything that would get me sent to the principal’s office, so being an accessory to tagging a wall—in pencil—felt like I was really living on the edge. Like I was really living like a villain.
As people wander the alley, taking pictures, Rick comes up beside me.
“So, this is what we do,” he says. “We tell people stories from history, then let them wander around to see if any ghosts show up. Firsthand ghost sightings are pretty hard to find, but I try my best to stick to primary sources. Out here it’s mostly stuff I hear from employees on smoke breaks.”
“I’m glad you aren’t just making stuff up. I think even the guides on the architecture tours make half their stories up.”
“They do. Most of them are actors. And you do have to put on a good show, even if you stick to the facts. Cyn said you had some theater experience?”
“Couple of plays in high school. I was one of the sweet old ladies who kill people in Arsenic and Old Lace.”
Rick holds up a hand. “High five.”
I explore the alley a bit myself, getting a feel for the place and trying to imagine what it was like with dead bodies strewn all around. Most of the people on the tour are having a morbid sort of fun with the whole thing. It would seem like an odd place to take selfies, but they’re not taking shots of themselves at the former site of a pile of bodies, they’re taking shots of themselves going ghost hunting. There’s a difference.
Still, I hear one lady say, “I just think this guy is too flippant about death.”
I can see where she’s coming from, but you have to be flippant about death. I mean, when you laugh at death, it loses a bit of its power over you.
Not that it doesn’t have all the power it needs.
There are more gruesome stories about the spots we drive by after getting back on the bus. An actor leaving his skull to a nearby theater so he could play Yorick in Hamlet. A barber shoving his girlfriend’s chopped-up body in a barrel and mailing her to New York. The wreck of a homemade submarine containing a dead guy and a dead dog being dredged out of the river in 1915. When Rick mentions the dog, people say “awww.”
“There it is,” says Cyn. “There’s always an ‘awwww’ right there.”
“Every time,” says Rick. “I’ve talked about the grisly deaths of more than seven hundred people so far, but I mention one dead dog, and that’s what gets them.”
One woman gets really defensive. “Well, the dog didn’t do anything wrong!”
Yeah. Unlike those kids who had the nerve to go into a theater without making sure it was following all the fire codes. Those little bastards deserved it. Obviously.
Cyn veers around the curve of Wacker Drive, toward Lake Street, which runs underneath the Green Line “L” tracks.
“All right,” says Rick. “Now, in 1934, a woman named Mary Bregovy went out drinking and driving with a couple of guys she’d met at the Goldblatt’s department store. They ended up crashing into the ‘L’ track support beam right here in front of us, and she died right on the sidewalk. Excuse me.”
He opens the door and shouts, “She died right on this spot!” at a couple of women who are standing there with Old Navy bags. Everyone laughs, including the women, who wave as Rick shuts the door and turns back toward us.
“A few days later,” he goes on, “she was buried at Resurrection Cemetery and became one of the most popular candidates for the true identity of Resurrection Mary, the most famous ghost in Chicago.”
Everyone who grows up around here knows the Resurrection Mary story: people pick up a girl on the south side, offer her a ride, and she disappears as they drive past Resurrection Cemetery. Rick tells the basic story, then explains that vanishing hitchhiker legends are pretty common, but it’s usually something you hear about happening to a friend of a friend of the cousin of the guy standing next to you in line at Garrett’s Popcorn. With Mary, there are some firsthand accounts.
Construction on Lake Street slows us down to a standstill before we get to the next point of interest, and Rick has to fill time. He covers a few other theories about who Mary might be the ghost of, and talks about a couple of the known sightings. But traffic still isn’t moving.
“Why don’t you tell them about your plan for how to kidnap Resurrection Mary, Rick?” asks Cyn.
“Not that. I was in middle school when I thought of that. Middle school.”
“I think Megan needs to hear a bit of Ricardo History 101.”
“Yes, I do!” I call out.
Rick grits his teeth and inhales, then sighs, shakes his head, and chuckles a bit.
“Okey dokey,” he says. “Look. Cyn and I have been friends since we were kids out in Magwitch Park, and one of the reasons we became friends is that we both loved Resurrection Mary. We had both read everything written about her. Which, at the time, was mostly bull.”
“But we didn’t know that then,” says Cyn. “Now hurry up and tell them your plan for kidnapping her.”
“All right, all right,” he says. “Here’s how you kidnap Resurrection Mary. All you have to do is pick her up, then turn around and don’t drive past Resurrection Cemetery.”
A few people chuckle, and Cyn grabs for the microphone, holding it with one hand while she steers with another. She obviously loves teasing Rick.
“Now,” she says, “I told him that Mary was too smart for that, and she’d just jump out of the car at a light or something. But Ricardo here said he was going to distract her by making out with her in the backseat while his friend Willie drove. Willie was thirteen.”
“He could drive when he was ten,” says Rick.
“And, keep in mind,” Cyn goes on, “that Resurrection Mary is supposed to be at least eighteen or nineteen years old. Some accounts say early twenties. Tell them what you planned to do to get her to make out with your slick thirteen-year-old self, Rick.”
Rick hangs down his head in shame, though he’s clearly having a hard time not laughing, and says, “I said I’d seduce her by whispering some Spanish in her ear.”
“But the trouble is,” Cyn goes on, “that while Ricardo here is of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent, he is a fourth-generation American who doesn’t really know much Spanish. And I called him on that. So, tell the nice people what you told me you’d whisper in her ear, Mr. Smooth-Talking Kidnapper Tour Guide.”
He takes another deep breath, then smiles, takes back the microphone, and uses a sexy voice to whisper, “Sí, yo soy el baño loco, por favor.”
“Which means . . . ,” Cyn prods.
“It means, ‘Yes, I am the crazy bathroom, please.’ �
�
Everyone laughs. Cyn hardest of all.
“Hey,” says Rick. “Resurrection Mary would have died way before they started teaching Spanish in school. How would she know? Tell me it doesn’t sound suave.”
“You are the crazy bathroom, Ricardo,” says Cyn.
He makes a pretending-to-be-hurt face, then says, “What about you? Why don’t you tell them all how you used to claim to be part headless.”
She snatches the mic. “My great, great, great, great-something grandmother was beheaded in France,” she says proudly. “So I’m part headless. Simple as that.”
“That’s not how genetics works,” says Rick.
“Don’t mock my heritage, doinkus.”
Rick takes back the mic and says, “Hashtag: white people.”
Cyn wriggles the bus through the last of the construction traffic, and we head down Des Plaines Street, past the site of the Haymarket Massacre, winding our way to the next stop as the two of them make fun of each other, laughing and socking each other in the arm. It’s off topic, mostly, but they’re having a good time, so the customers are too. Sometimes the two of them aren’t even laughing at anything, just looking at each other and giggling at some private joke. Anyone on the bus who can’t tell they’re sleeping together is an idiot.
The next place we pull up to is Hull House, an old brick mansion on South Halsted Street. I can imagine it looking pretty creepy in the dark, but right now, in the daylight, it really just looks like a regular old house that’s been turned into a museum. According to Rick, it was already supposed to be haunted in 1889 when a woman named Jane Addams moved in, turned it into a settlement house, and basically invented American social work here.
A DarkSide Chicago Tours bus is parked right in front of us, and Rick keeps looking over his shoulder to check on it while he talks, like he thinks a group of hit men are going to come out of the emergency exit and blow him away. But he doesn’t miss a beat in telling the story of Hull House.
“Now, if you look at the bedroom on the right-hand side of the second floor, that was the one that the early staff here called the Haunted Room,” he says. “No one ever got a good night’s sleep there. And Jane wasn’t a big believer in ghosts, but she loved ghost stories, so she had to try it out. She and her partner, Mary, spent exactly one night in there.”